Teleflip makes stupid phones smart

Most mobile phones are not BlackBerrys. Or Treos. If you have a "dumb" phone, you can go a long way toward making it a better e-mail appliance by "flipping" it at Teleflip.com (starting in March). The free service uses SMS to make any phone into a nice e-mail-reading machine.

Sending e-mails to phones via SMS is not a new idea. Teleflip's pitch is its ease of setup: go to the site, enter your phone number, e-mail address, and password, and from then on you'll be able to see your e-mails on your phone. You can reply to them from your phone, too.

Advanced features include filters that tell the service which messages get sent to the phone and which don't. If you have a limited data plan, that will be important.